


Broken

by PoisonJack



Category: Borderlands (Video Games)
Genre: Assassination Attempt(s), Established Relationship, General au, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, all dirty and tired and waiting by the hospital bed mmm, all our favorite tropes are here, i've always pegged jack as being an O type blood haha GIVE IT ALL TO RHYS, this one... is a little more emotional so you've been warned of feels
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-25
Updated: 2018-12-25
Packaged: 2019-09-19 16:30:34
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,637
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17005146
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PoisonJack/pseuds/PoisonJack
Summary: Rhys takes a bullet meant for Jack. Lying in the dirt bleeding out, Jack is totally desperate on saving him (he does, for those worried about a happy ending haha)From a hurt meme prompt request on tumblr:"omg the hurt meme, it hurts so good. ok uh for the hurt meme, Rhack of course: “don’t close your eyes, please don’t close your eyes!” or “i got you. it’s gonna be okay, you’re going to be okay.” . i couldn’t decide ( omg now i’m just thinking of hurt!Rhys D: )and"i know this hurts, but you have to stay awake"





	Broken

**Author's Note:**

> This was _so_ fun to write way back like i'm actually shocked i never got it up over here. Well, 2 years later here it is!

They were alone as men were fanned out and firing echoed in the rocky facility.

After the screams, all Rhys had left was a litany of “ _fuck!_ “s and other noises of excruciating pain as he laid bleeding in the dirt. It was the worst pain he’d ever felt, and he could tell it was serious. Something was very very wrong inside his body. He tried to keep thoughts of _I’m dying_ out of his head, but deep down he knew he was fucked.

"Jack it-it hurts…. _fuck_ it hurts.”

“I know baby hang in there,” Jack told him as he applied pressure to the younger man’s stomach. Rhys screamed out in pain, and Jack ignored it as he tried to staunch the free-flowing wound with his shirt. There was a quickly forming puddle of thick red beneath Rhys as he lay in the orange Pandoran earth. The bullet was still in his gut– hadn’t gone clean through- and he was bleeding profusely from the entry point.

Rhys was writhing as he lay there, but not as furiously as when he’d initially gone down. Breathing hard and gasping in pain, crying out as Jack tried to tend to him in a frantic panic. He’d never felt pain like this before. He wanted to claw it out with his own hands. He could taste copper and bile in his throat, his body hot and cold, and he was terrified.

“I got you. it’s gonna be okay, you’re going to be okay.”

Jack was mentally strangling himself over not forcing the younger man to wear the body armor his soldiers were wearing as they went down to the shithole of a planet. "If you won’t wear it then I don’t see why I need to,” Rhys had adamantly told him. Jack wished he hadn’t been indulgent. Wished he hadn’t laughed it off when Rhys said Jack was a far more tempting target than he could ever be anyways. Jack wished he could rewind the clock. It all counted for naught.

The sniper had gotten off just one single shot before Jack’s men took him out and immediately swept the area for more insurgents. The shot that was aimed at Jack instead hit Rhys. Had Jack not turned to yell at the unit leader about why the hell it was taking his men so long to get their shit together, it would be Jack in the dirt right now with a bullet in him, not the younger man.  


That’s when the assault began, and they were ambushed by poorly organized bandits but in surprising numbers. All hell had broken loose after that single bullet had found a home in Rhys’ body. And now Jack was alone as fighting went on around him to try to fix the gaping hole in the younger man’s body.

“Jack…” Rhys whined the older man’s name, his voice weak with pain as tears streamed down the side of his face.

“I know I know,” the older man said. “Someone get me a damn medic or a med kit or _something_!”

Rhys wouldn’t stop bleeding. The blood in the dirt was warm as it soaked into Jack’s jeans at the knee. It wouldn’t fucking stop, and Rhys was getting noticeably paler as the minutes ticked by, laying there like some broken ragdoll. The shirt Jack had pressed to his wound was soaked. 

Rhys’ heart was beating faster and his vision was going splotchy. He felt freezing under the hot Pandoran sun, and intense burning, screaming pain where the bullet was lodged in his gut. Sleep was pulling at him. Hard. Sweet dark oblivion and relief from the pain if he just gave in. And it was becoming more and more difficult to resist that urge. His eyelids felt heavy and it took considerable effort to keep them open.

“Hey. Hey now pumpkin. Don’t close your eyes, _please_ don’t close your eyes!” He patted a bloody hand against Rhys’ cheek, the younger man trying hard to focus on his face. His eyes kept trying to either close or roll up into his head. Jack’s voice was frantic. "I know this hurts, but you have to stay awake. Stay awake, Rhysie.”

“Ja….’m scared.” His voice was weak and Jack felt a wave of cold panic wash over him.

“Just hang on baby, okay? Be strong sweetheart, you’re strong.” Jack grit his teeth as he looked around. “Where is my fucking medic?!!”

“J…Ja-ck…” His eyes were barely open now, slivers of white as he tried to speak his last. Jack felt his heart lurch in his chest as he looked at the younger man in horror. “L…. Lov… you…”

Jack’s eyes were swimming as he looked at the younger man, trying to swallow around the lump in his throat as his heart clenched in his chest. “No no no no no don’t you let go Rhysie. Don’t you dare fucking let go! Stay awake!!”

Rhys didn’t answer him, didn’t acknowledge him in any way shape or form, his lungs barely drawing in breath. Too much blood was lost. Way too much fucking blood. Jack felt white hot rage and sorrow fill him as he felt helpless and couldn’t accept it. 

“Jack! Handsome Jack! Sir we have an Anshin–”

“Give it the fuck here!” Jack’s voice was choked with desperate pain as he yelled, quickly rifling through the soldier’s kit. He found a red vial and popped the top. “Hold pressure!” He growled out to the man at his side. The solider did as he was told and Jack was taking Rhys’ face in his hand, bringing the vial to his lips. “Come on baby… come on… Drink this for me….”

“Sir–”

“Shut the fuck up!!” Jack ground out as he tried to get the younger man to respond. 

“Sir even if it closes the wound–”

“I will fucking _shred_ you,” Jack told the man, turning back to snarl at him. The expression on Handsome Jack’s face made the soldier go pale.

“He needs blood,” he stuttered.

“Then he’ll get it. Open the fucking kit and give me that syringe.”

Jack didn’t have time to wait for a medic, or to get Rhys somewhere he could get him a transfusion. If he could just staunch the wound and stop the bleeding…

“Sir–”

“I’m gonna give him my blood now try to keep him stable.”

“But sir–”

“ _What_?!” Jack snarled as he was wrapping his belt around his bicep and pumping a fist to get a vein. 

“The hole still isn’t quite–”

“Find me another goddamn kit then and get me more shit!!”

Jack inserted the syringe into his arm and pulled as it filled with red. Rhys’ blood pressure was too low, but Jack made due as best he could. The words “too little too late” were rolling around in his head with terror as he repeated the drawing and injecting of blood, hoping beyond hope it would make a difference.

Rhys was still lifeless and limp by the time the solder came back with another kit and a blood-covered medic. They immediately set up a field transfusion straight from Jack and into the younger man. But Rhys was didn’t revive, just another body on the battlefield as the medic tried his best.

–

There was white all around him. Nothing but clean, pure white. Rhys knew he was dead. He’d felt himself dying in the dirt. Jack’s face was the last thing he’d seen. And now all was white. He wasn’t too impressed by that.

He blinked and moved his head, and realized the white he was seeing was clean, sterile walls. Nothing to be found but paint.

So he hadn’t died. He was in a hospital bed. 

There was a filthy Jack sleeping in a chair right next to him, looking worn out and exhausted and disturbed even in sleep. So they’d made it out, then. And Jack was okay. Good. It made Rhys smile, and he tiredly allowed himself to succumb back to sleep, knowing everything would okay.

Trauma was what the doctors eventually said. Losing as much blood as he had had caused his body a decent amount of trauma, and all the tests and scans and physicals they gave him were to make sure no lasting damage had been done. The worst he’d gotten out of the whole deal was a neat scar on his lower body. And that was that.

Jack didn’t let him out of his sight for the next month solid. It was cute at first until the older man wouldn’t even let him piss in peace until Rhys threatened to give him a scar to match.

The whole incident had shaken the older man in ways he’d never expected, and the way he clung to Rhys at night was quite telling to the younger man. It took a while before things went back to some semblance of normal. But Rhys thought that some things never went back to how they once were. 

Jack didn’t personally go down to Pandora anymore. He was more cautious and a lot more demonstrative in his affection for the younger man. Rhys got his own personal loader bot to follow him around. “Like a pet” the older man had said. Jack asked Rhys to marry him and move in not long after that. And even after the whole Pandora incident was just another memory in a long line of crazy incidents, Jack was never quite the same man he’d been before that. 

The scar Jack carried from Rhys’ brush with death was a lot thicker and deeper than the faded bullet wound that marred the younger man’s flesh.

He was different, but as he told Rhys he loved him every single day, and held him every single night, maybe that wasn’t necessarily a bad thing.

**Author's Note:**

> Fun fact: i hadn't actually played the game until this year, and i was cackling about the health hypos you use in Borderlands being called Anshin; 'anshin' means 'relief' in japanese haha One of the words I had to learn/use to tell my coworkers about my anxiety medication and needing support when i was living in japan haha
> 
> [my tumblr](http://purge-that-urge-rhackathon.tumblr.com/) | [my fic masterlist archive](http://purge-that-urge-rhackathon.tumblr.com/post/134979026515/poisonjack-ao3-fic-archive) | [my twitter](https://twitter.com/PurgeThatUrge) | [my pillowfort](https://www.pillowfort.io/PoisonJack)  
> (Just an FYI: you'll need to be logged in to tumblr for my blog to show up since it's marked explicit :D)
> 
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